Liar
by Nancy T
Summary: Why Crowley really sold his soul; what happened between Crowley and Naomi in Mesopotamia; and a previously untold encounter between them.


[Author's Note: Mid-season 8, Crowley and Naomi had a confrontation in which he told her, "If you remember our time in Mesopotamia the way I do, you know I'm a lover, not a fighter." Toward the end of the season, they had a mutually threatening standoff at the site of the mass murder ordered by Naomi, and Crowley said, "We've been here before, haven't we?" The following took place between those two remarks, and gives the full story behind both.]

.

The angel was young (well, for an angel) and trapped in the vessel of a lissome Asian-American woman in a dark suit. She was trapped by cuffs made of a re-fashioned angel blade – only Hell (or Heaven) could produce the heat and pressure that would re-forge one of those things – and the cuffs were chained to the dungeon's rock wall, the angel's wrists at a level just above her head.

A quick smile flicked over Crowley's face at a memory. Six, maybe seven decades ago, he'd made a deal with a serial rapist whose pornographic fantasies often featured women chained like this. The rapist would get absolute protection from the police for ten years in exchange for his soul at the end of that time. The deal hadn't included anything about protection from anyone else, though, and when the next woman he'd attacked plunged a knife under the criminal's ribcage, the hellhounds had dragged his soul to Hell even before the woman had staggered to the phone, trying to figure out why her carving knife had even been in her bedroom.

Crowley was normally patient in collecting the souls that gave him power and status in Hell. If you collected too many souls before their ten-year deals were up, word got around among human beings, and they started getting reluctant to sell their souls, and then all crossroads demons would suffer punishment from their superiors. Someone like that rapist, though – no one cared if his soul had been taken early, not humans, not crossroads demons, not demonic bosses.

"You might as well kill me," the angel chained to the wall said. "I won't tell you anything."

Crowley's eyes went red briefly. "Don't tempt me, darling. I know you've heard of Samandriel."

The angel met his gaze and exerted her power as much as possible. A narrow corona of white light gleamed around her. The cuffs and chains glowed as if they were molten, and she gasped with pain, cutting back on her power.

"Ouch," Crowley said. He tilted his head a bit, thinking about what to tell her. Most direct was probably best. "There's not much point in singeing the vessel. You'll be out of here as soon as your superior comes charging in to save the day."

"I'm bait?"

"Oh, you are smart, aren't you? Not smart enough to avoid this situation, but smart enough to know when you're a supernumerary. So relax and – "

She was radiating confidence, even joy. It didn't show as visible light, but he could feel it emanating from her grace, and it choked off his voice for a moment. He took a step back.

Then he cleared his throat. "You're sure she'll kill me, are you?"

The angel remained silent. She must have realized that her joy and faith were weapons.

The he felt the searing holy self-confidence an instant before white light filled the room, and he barely got the angel blade in his hand in time. Naomi materialized and the chained angel screamed a warning and her terror reverberated satisfyingly against Crowley's essence.

Naomi would give him no such satisfaction. She looked at him, the chained angel, the room for a moment, outwardly calm, her beautiful eyes alert.

Then she smiled a bit and beckoned the angel-killing blade toward her, daring him to charge. "Well?"

"This isn't a suicide mission," Crowley said. "This is just a little self-protection while we talk."

"If you want to talk to me, you can let her go."

"Actually, that's what I want to talk about." Crowley smiled a bit, but kept a firm grip on the blade. "I'll let her go if you'll take her place."

"Don't!" the chained angel said sharply, and Naomi looked at her with disapproval.

"I mean – I know I can't tell you what to do, Naomi. But you know so much more about Heaven's plans and defenses than I do. And we need your leadership. Heaven can spare me, it can't spare you."

Naomi studied the other angel sympathetically for a moment, then turned an entirely different gaze on Crowley. "This is beneath even you, Crowley, and I wouldn't have thought that was possible."

He feigned a shiver. "Oh, the richness of that contempt. Sends chills down my spine. Well? Do we have a deal?"

She looked at him for a moment as if undecided whether to laugh at him or squash him. Then she nodded. Instantly, the young angel was free and Naomi was chained to the wall.

The young angel flew at Crowley, but he slapped the blade against Naomi's throat, and she stopped dead.

"Best to run along and let the grown-ups talk," Crowley said laconically.

"Go, Qamiel. Send help," Naomi said. "You'll be back well before he's worn me down."

Qamiel looked anxiously at Naomi. She started to say something, then vanished.

Crowley dropped the blade. His head drooped and shoulders rounded suddenly, as if he'd just dropped a huge burden. "Well, finally. Do you know how much energy it takes to sustain an illusion that will fool even a minor angel?"

"Illusion? Where does she think we are?"

"In the ruins of a medieval dungeon in France."

Naomi glanced up at the spectacular two-story rock accent wall to which she was chained; the rest of the room was mahogany, marble, and soft fabric. "We're in a mansion on the West Coast of the USA."

"Thanks for reminding me." Crowley went to the door, opened it, and pressed his finger to its outside face. His touch scorched the wood and he branded an angel-warding sigil in the door before closing it. "Couldn't ward the house completely, or how would you have found it? Now it's totally off the angelic radar. The poor thing will be tearing up half the cellars of Europe looking for you."

He grinned at Naomi, radiating self-satisfaction. She looked back at him, unafraid and, perhaps, just a little bit amused.

"So," Crowley said. "Where were we? Oh, yes. Traded the Sweetheart of Sigma Chi for you. In my former line of work, we call that a deal."

He slapped his right hand to the wall between her face and her chained wrist, leaned forward, and kissed her hard on the mouth.

.

She'd always been warned not to underestimate demons, and she'd always ignored the warnings, and that had always worked for her. Not only were demons abominations, God's creation twisted disgustingly, they were weak abominations. Even the strong and smart ones required only a little more power and cunning to obliterate than their fellows. She had never felt the allure of any temptation to fall.

Only once had a demon made Naomi hesitate, with a temptation to rise. He had offered a partnership. If she'd protect him, he'd feed her information about demonic plans and appearances, so that she could impress her Heavenly superiors with her insight and conquests. She knew that she was exceptionally able, and secretly harbored the ambition of working alongside Michael someday. But she was only tempted for a moment, and she'd made the demon's death especially grueling as retribution for that moment.

And then came World War I, and the Mesopotamian Campaign.

Lower-level demons were flocking to the battlefields, of course, lazily enjoying human rage, sorrow, suffering, and cruelty. But there was one demon moving around miles away, in the offices and living quarters of decision makers on both sides, who seemed to read human desires as easily as he read menus in all languages, offering protection, offering promotion, making deals for human souls.

Naomi obtained permission to kill Crowley. If she couldn't do it without drawing human attention to a burst of angelic power, she was allowed at least to throw the creature back into Hell. She did some research, discovering that the demon Crowley was a surprisingly interesting study.

As a human he'd been deadly dull, from an angelic point of view. A smooth-tongued 17th-century tailor talking customers into finer fabrics, more expensive trimmings. He knew how to use the right proportions of flattery and bluntness to make wealthy people feel that he was clever and trustworthy. Several of his connections had benefited from his dropping the right name to the right person. He might have wound up as one of the occasional commoners in history who wield a startling amount of power behind the scenes.

But Fergus MacLeod wasn't truly interested in politics; he was truly interested in sensation. The harder the drink, the more debauched the whore, the more brutal the cockfight, the more he enjoyed himself. He loved a coarse noisy bar, and a coarse noisy bar fight even more. He was known to be one of the best tailors in the region, and one of the slowest, because it's really hard to thread a needle when you have a pounding hangover.

There were people who believed his absurd story of having sold his soul for penis enlargement. Naomi knew why he'd put that story about – because he didn't want anyone to know he'd sold his soul for the sappiest of all reasons, love of a woman.

She was the daughter of a client, young and beautiful, sweet and virginal, utterly out of his reach. He became passionately obsessed with her, convinced that if he had her he'd need nothing else to be happy. He made a deal with a demon, talking the demon into an extra five years, fifteen years to hold the love of his life. The girl fell in love with him and had to abandon her family and social class, and they were married with a couple of his drinking buddies as the only witnesses.

Within two years he was bored, seeking sensation again – first in sexual experimentation with her, which she agreed to but clearly disliked, then, more and more frequently, with booze and prostitutes. Her forgiveness made him impatient, her tearfulness made him surly. He made every effort to drive her away, but the demon's deal held: she loved him and forgave him no matter what he did. He left her a couple of times. She couldn't go back to her family and she had few friends, so she'd track him down, her quiet gentility a haunting that no drink or violence could expel. Their only child grew up hating his father. And then the hellhounds came.

Naomi seriously wondered why humans ever made deals with demons.

MacLeod had hated torture, of course, but had somehow maintained his cockiness. He was perfectly willing to be of help to Hell, but Hell doesn't want human souls until they're completely broken. It was Lilith who realized that pain wasn't the way to break MacLeod. His soul was extracted from the mock body used for torture and locked into a sealed chamber in one of the loneliest parts of Hell – a gray wisp with consciousness but without sight, without hearing, without feeling, unable even to harm himself.

He had completely broken within weeks, submitting to torture when told, meekly returning to the chamber when told. At that point, Lilith took him in hand. She was the one who taught him strategy to go along with his cruelty. She was the one who taught him the value of a polished surface. If you were well spoken, well dressed and well groomed, you could sink to almost any depth of vice or violence, and both humans and demons would have a hard time believing it of you.

His persuasiveness remained. He was a natural as a crossroads demon, and a towering success. He was overjoyed to be indulging sensually again, and now without consequence – to himself, at least; his hosts dropped dead the instant he left them. He fed a steady stream of souls to Hell, and had been King of the Crossroads well before World War I. (The previous King had disappeared after a hunter named Colt had, somehow, learned his identity and location.)

Naomi, in a vessel, stalked him as subtly as she could. At a diplomatic function in Ankara one night, he turned suddenly and engaged her in conversation. In the middle of the crowd there was nothing she could do, and she admitted later to some admiration for his brazen courage.

He escaped her that night, but she tracked him until the day she had him trapped in a dry riverbed alone.

He left his meatsuit instantly. She paused for just a second, to make sure Crowley's former host was dead, before leaving her vessel with a blasting burn of power. In that instant of hesitation, she expected him to try to escape. Instead, he flung himself at her.

If a human had been watching – one whose eyes wouldn't have been destroyed by her radiance—it would have been like peering into the heart of a volcano, blackish-red smoke billowing through and entangled with white-hot fire and light. Naomi only knew how it felt. Her ambition suddenly blossomed in her, desire for power tinged with rage at being taken for granted. She wanted more and was startlingly unashamed of that, embracing the darkness to which no angel would ever admit, her being surging with impatience and a sudden limitlessness.

For a few moments she did nothing, stunned with surprise and horror at herself. Then she struck back with her sense of being aligned with God, her knowledge of virtue and protectiveness. It hurt him, she could tell. He wanted to flee but wanted to stay, and she realized that the pain she was giving him was as exciting to him as a bar fight would have been to Fergus MacLeod.

She should have emitted a burst of Heavenly energy that would have scattered his essence across the solar system. Instead she gave a low pulse, sensing his pain, glorying in her power. Angels aren't supposed to be vain about their power – it's hardly like they created it themselves – but she wanted Crowley to know her power. And she wanted to know him, the darkness coursing through her.

Then the darkness was gone. Crowley fled back to Hell, exorcising himself just to escape her. Her pleasure and self-horror combined made her incapable of intercepting him. She was left a slowly turning spiral of red light. Her vessel gaped up at her, knowing something grotesque had happened but not exactly what.

It was obvious to her superiors, though. She was recalled and, among other things, "Your grace stinks of sulfur," Raphael said, almost too disgusted to form the thought. She was publicly humiliated, punished painfully and for a long time, then demoted. It would be centuries before she regained her prior rank, millennia before she could even think of working near the head of Michael's army.

And they were right, of course. She agreed with everything they did to her, every shudder of negative energy her presence caused among other angels. She remembered radiating such vilification at other angels who'd sinned with a demon. She didn't sympathize with them more now; she despised herself more.

She always been warned not to underestimate demons, and she'd always ignored the warnings. If she'd been warned against overestimating herself, she'd probably have ignored those warnings too. If she were never allowed to take on a vessel or assume any serious responsibility again, she couldn't blame them.

And then, less than one century after her disgrace, everything changed as the Chaos filled Heaven.

Lucifer was loosed from his cage in Hell and walked the Earth. Preparations were made for Armageddon. Then the Winchester brothers gave a straightforward prophecy a horrible twist: Michael, Michael himself, was thrown into Lucifer's cage with Lucifer, condemned to battle the fratricidal traitor maybe forever, out of reach of any Heavenly help.

(And now she would never be able to redeem herself in his eyes.)

Raphael tried to force Armageddon, without Lucifer and without Michael. Castiel – quiet, scholarly, obedient Castiel – rejected the idea, declaring that angels had free will and could defy Raphael's orders. Rebellious angels followed him in a war that tore Heaven asunder.

(Castiel had never hurled contempt at her. He genuinely seemed to feel that it wasn't his place to judge his fellow angels. In retrospect, she didn't know if that was more ironic or more sad.)

Then there were rumors that Castiel was working with the new King of Hell to gain enough power to win the war and stop Armageddon. Apparent confirmation of those rumors when sweet non-judgmental Castiel was suddenly powerful enough to murder Raphael, the last of the four great archangels left in Heaven. The surge of power boiling Castiel's grace to insanity, as he declared himself to be God and murdered hundreds of angels who defied him. And then Castiel's complete disappearance.

All order was overthrown in Heaven, all propriety. Anyone who could cope, who could survive, was called upon to lead. It didn't matter that she'd allowed a demon to defile her. She was living, she was capable, she had a plan. Angels whose whole existence had been obedience flocked to her and to her faction.

And as for disobedient angels, those who still insisted on free will – Well, they had to be dealt with. As far as she could see, free will among angels had caused only anarchy and slaughter. If torture and mind control were needed to restore order, those were the right actions to take. Michael had always said that if an action was required by Heaven, that alone made the action right, and she was a firm believer in the doctrine. She tried not to feel too much satisfaction when Castiel was found in Purgatory and brought out, and she herself brought him to heel, the former rebel and ultimate blasphemer forced into obedient puppetry.

She needed a vessel even before Castiel was located, and found one in a middle-management business executive in Germany. She was a passionate woman whose libido had led her to choose men who were bad for her. Often. Finally she'd forsworn love and sex, devoted herself to her career and religion. She and Naomi were a perfect fit.

She had learned that Crowley was the new King of Hell shortly after it happened. That certainly explained how Castiel had been seduced, his head turned. She couldn't think of another demon who would have been capable of mangling the grace of an angel like Castiel.

(And even now, simply thinking about that gave her a low dark shiver that she hid from all others, almost even from herself.)

Crowley still probably thought of her as weak and, well, easy. She was aching to correct that impression, but she was still leery of confronting him personally, frightened of what her reaction might be. Luckily, when a confrontation came, it happened so fast and she was so damn mad that unnerving feelings didn't enter into it.

Heaven's leaders had already known about the Demon Tablet, an ancient slab of stone with In-Case-of-Emergency instructions from God inscribed on it. They knew that the Demon Tablet had instructions for shutting all demons back into Hell forever, although no one in Heaven knew where it was or how to read the inscription. (A human prophet could read it. Of course. Again God's obvious preference for his weakest creations.) Then Heaven learned that there was an Angel Tablet, and it wasn't much of a leap to assume that it had instructions for disempowering all angels, possibly even locking the door between Heaven and humanity.

(In case Heaven's leaders took to actions like forcing Armageddon or torture and mind control? The thought crossed her mind, and she dismissed it.)

The damned Winchester brothers (literally; both had done time in Hell), unashamed to use both angelic and demonic help, had found the Angel Tablet. Determined to force Castiel to bow to Heaven's priorities once and for all, she'd ordered him to kill Dean Winchester and bring the Angel Tablet to Heaven. In hindsight, that was a mistake; if she'd just ordered him to knock Dean out with a touch to the forehead, she'd probably have the tablet safe in Heaven now.

But Castiel's love for Dean (however you wanted to interpret the word "love") had cracked her control over him, and touching the Angel Tablet had apparently broken her control once and for all. At least he hadn't handed it over to the Winchesters; he'd taken it and fled one way, the angel-warded Winchesters another, and by the time she got to the crypt where the tablet had been, everything was out of her reach.

Except for Crowley, who was there and almost as angry about losing a great anti-angel weapon as she was.

The sniveling weasel told her that she was losing her touch. (Why oh why didn't she remind Crowley that his own attempt to control Castiel hadn't ended up too successful for him either?) He dared to remind her of Mesopotamia. He dared to offer her a deal. "I must have something that you want," he said, and she was so enraged that she vanished without saying a word, although she used her angelic senses to hear him finish the sentence and watch his reaction. He was a little put out.

Minor irritation was not the reaction she wanted.

After another snide encounter with Crowley, and some very irritating talks with Dean Winchester trying to get him to trust her and help find Castiel, she was pondering her next move when she felt a sudden disruption in her energy and "heard" with her angelic senses a cry of fear from her aide, Qamiel.

She was astonished at the obviousness of the situation Crowley had set up. Of course, throwing his energy at hers hadn't exactly been subtle either, and that had worked for him well enough. Obviously he wanted a repeat of Mesopotamia, and in a horribly juvenile-human way she was overjoyed: He wasn't just a little irritated! Seeing me again did have a real effect on him!

But this was between them. There was no reason to drag Qamiel into it. What a self-important self-confident capsule of slime he was.

But then he kissed her, and she felt intimate contact for the first time inside a body with flesh and nerve endings and a heart, and suddenly Crowley's reaction to her was completely irrelevant, disappearing in the tidal wave of her reaction to him.

.

Her lips parted for him and her body writhed slowly and hard against his. Crowley was getting nothing but astonished confusion from Naomi herself, but apparently her vessel knew a thing or two and had enough control, with Naomi stunned, to use her knowledge.

And as that thought occurred to him, her clothing changed dramatically. She was wearing a long crisp translucent negligee, cocoa colored, with tiny crystals lining the plunging neckline.

Crowley raised his eyebrows. "Well. Your vessel clearly knows what she wants. But she couldn't have got dressed for the occasion without your power." He ran his fingertips just under the negligee's neckline, barely caressing her skin, smiling.

Then he was thrown against the opposite wall – and it was a big room – by a burst of power accompanied by a scalding splash of righteous indignation.

He gasped, shuddered, braced himself against the wall. It was a moment before he could put the smile back on his face. "Now, now. Is that the way to treat a fellow who's only trying to give you what you want?"

She was smiling triumphantly, her breasts rising and falling fast. All right, enough of the warrior-against-sacrilege act. He met her gaze and rolled his unbridled lust for power at her.

She stared at him steadily for just a moment. Then her eyes closed and she had a weird double reaction. Her body went weak, dangling from the metal cuffs, while the angel herself glowed with power, tendrils of white light shooting out in all directions.

He braced, but the tendrils weren't aimed at him specifically. They wanted everything. The gas-log fireplace roared up without gas, the lights went on and off, the window through which he could see the setting sun cracked. A pastoral painting in pretty pastels ripped from the wall and impaled itself on a deep red sconce; bottles exploded inside a liquor cabinet, light catching on dangerous flying shards of glass and splashing liquid.

Then there was silence. Naomi's vessel hung unmoving from the wall, and Naomi glowed all through her.

"Did you – " Crowley's voice was a little strained. He cleared his throat. "Did you just have an orgasm?"

Naomi raised her head. Her eyes were radiant, literally, and her smile was a little frightening. "I resist you every time. You can't tempt me with power."

Centuries of knowing exactly how far you can push someone kept Crowley from laughing out loud. But he couldn't resist saying, "Mm – obviously I can."

He teased her with it, giving her his satisfaction and vengeful joy at control, hiding from her his terror of what would happen if his control over Hell were lost. She clutched his greed with her angelic spirit, pulling on it, then lashed it back at him with contempt. He shuddered with pain and pleasure.

"Imagine the team that we could make, Naomi." He was a little breathless. "The King of Hell and his brilliant consort. The combination of our powers would make us unstoppable. Human rulers groveling at our feet. Demon armies massed to carry out our commands. Heaven organized and obedient, and those angels who thought you were beneath them, who spat on you while they used your work, would all be — "

"Are you telling me – " Her voice cut through his, a blade through butter – "you worked so hard to get me here and put me in chains so that you could – " laughter burst out of her as though she herself didn't expect it – "propose?"

His face was serious as he approached, his voice warm. "You're so close, Naomi. We both know it. All you have to do is let go. Release that one confining tatter of righteousness that tethers you to Heaven. Castiel fell, and overturned Heaven with his power. When you fall, your power will let us put it back in order. Everyone knowing their place. All the powers of Heaven and Hell – " he brushed his lips over her fingertips, and her eyes closed – "in these elegant hands."

There was a low rumble. He took a step back, studying her face, trying to figure what the rumble meant. Blasting heat from the cuffs made him back up faster – and the King of Hell is fairly used to heat. Her forearms and hands were lit from within, and when she looked at him so were her eyes.

She shouldn't have been able to break those cuffs. So he didn't consider fleeing, just dove behind a sofa as the mortar of the accent wall crumbled, rocks pounded the floor, and the rumble became a roar. But Naomi was far more powerful than poor Samandriel had been. The shackles splintered, shredding her vessel's arms. White-hot metal shot through walls and furniture, blue-white grace leaped free, blood erupted from her like a fountain.

She pointed with a mangled hand at the ceiling above Crowley. He tried to get away, but wasn't fast enough; the devil's trap was burned into the ceiling above him in a flash. He hit the invisible barrier and staggered back, swearing, as she fell to her knees, clutching her gore-covered forearms.

The blood stopped spurting immediately. It took a few more moments for her to heal bone and tattered flesh, severed fingers. Then she collapsed, lying on the floor in a pool of her vessel's blood, trying to breathe evenly.

After a moment, Crowley said, "That was remarkable."

She gave him a look, but didn't deign to respond.

"I'm quite serious. Breaking those cuffs should have exhausted your power. You had enough left for — " he glanced up at the devil's trap imprisoning him – "this thing. And then healing yourself. I can only think of one other angel with that kind of endurance."

"Michael."

He made a little moue, granting her point, but then said, "One other angel who's still among us. Castiel."

She laughed quickly, pulling herself a little from the floor.

"Don't tell me you're taking him lightly. The way your superiors took you lightly. He's an angel who survived separate attacks by Raphael and Lucifer. Not to mention being ripped apart by Leviathan, and a year in Purgatory. Now, clearly he has friends in very high places – "

"Nonsense. Propaganda. God did not trouble Himself to bring that – mutant back so many – "

"All the more remarkable then, his survival, isn't it? And after all that, he managed to break your mind control."

Her eyes narrowed. "Your little conspiracy with him didn't work out too well either. Unless you actually enjoyed hiding from him in, what was it, a mobile home park?"

"You're making my point for me."

She sat up a little further, back straight, glistening red smears on her skin and the beautiful negligee, matting her hair.

"He's a loose cannon rolling down Everest," Crowley said. "It will require both of us to stop him. It will require both of us to use the Angel Tablet effectively. It will certainly require both of us to rule Heaven and Hell, getting what we require from both, keeping order in the spiritual realm. After that, well, we can fully enjoy what the human realm has to offer."

It wasn't just recuperation that was speeding her breath. She touched her tongue to her lips as though she could taste, her eyes unfocused as though she could envision, the power he was offering. He'd seen that expression at a crossroads, many times.

He moved as close to her as the trap would allow, standing straight, but looking down at her with warmth. "No one else makes you feel like I do. You know that."

There was a moment of silence.

"Do you remember Mesopotamia?" she asked quietly.

"I just reminded you about it, days ago. I could never forget."

"You hurled yourself at me."

His eyes shifted as he tried to figure out the best response to that. "Ah – self-defense? But Naomi, you must admit – "

She was glowing again and he realized what was going to happen and turned his back, clenching his eyes shut, as there was the searing flash and roar of an angel leaving her vessel. The flash subsided but there was still glare, a searchlight in his face. Even Crowley wasn't prepared for this and as he gasped, the brilliant blue-white light leaped between his lips.

Naomi poured herself down his throat, spreading throughout his blood and bone, his brain, his essence. The man whose soul had first occupied this body was barely a tick of consciousness, too far gone to require her permission to enter; she could barely sense him.

But Crowley, whose permission she did not need, she could sense all through herself, pinioned with her inside the meatsuit, hungry and brutal and cold. She'd never felt such cold, nothing to do with temperature, everything to do with utter separation and isolation.

 _And that's why we are unconquerable together._ The thought reverberated through her. _Cold and heat, light and dark, reward and punishment. In your kingdom it's all teamwork and obedience, in mine it's every demon for himself. No matter what they throw at us, we have an answer, we have a weapon._

He wrapped around her, surging and pulsing, and she was dizzied with selfish desire, plunged into him as he plunged into her, lighting him as he cooled her, and she was a moment from telling him yes.

But she reached his core as he tried to distract her with flattery and promises. And his core was frozen stone. It couldn't be lighted, wouldn't be warmed, didn't care about the ravishing pleasure they were exchanging. She might be capable of partnership, but he never would be. She could be useful to him, in various ways, but in the end it would come down to him or her, and that stony core wouldn't so much as chip when he destroyed her.

She disentangled herself and roared out of the meatsuit. She was vaguely aware that it was flat on its back as she hovered over her vessel.

The woman was still sitting on the floor in a pool of her own blood, but that wasn't what was bothering her. She was staring at Crowley, trying to pull her negligee closed over her breasts with one hand, the other hand caressing her own thigh spasmodically.

"I know this has been traumatic," Naomi began – and Crowley, beginning to rise, shuddered and covered his ears – "but if you will – "

"Don't let me," the woman said in German. "Never again, never let me – "

"I promise. No more sensuality, no more – feeling. For either of us."

The vessel opened her arms to Naomi, and the angel descended into her. It hadn't just been the emotional trauma of her vessel's lust for a demon; the vessel also was still feeling the effects of traumatic injury and blood loss. Naomi sat quietly for a moment, healing, watching Crowley.

The sofa he'd used as temporary shelter was overturned partway inside the devil's trap. Crowley, looking disgruntled at the need for physical exertion, had righted the sofa and was pulling it over to him. He looked for a cushion that hadn't been shredded by flying shards of shackles, and sat down.

Naomi cleaned the blood from the floor, her skin, her hair. Then she replaced the filmy negligee with her usual business suit. Her vessel relaxed from the inside out as she did this, but she still felt a hard cold knot like a tumor in her grace.

Crowley was picking at the upholstery of the sofa. She stood, and now she was the one looking down at him. "Hard to get things just the way you want them without power, isn't it?"

He ground his fist into a cushion as though trying to even it out. "Yes. It is."

"I'm afraid I have to reject your proposal," she said, and raised her hand.

His hand flashed upward too, and then she could tell he had his power back even before she realized that the devil's trap was broken.

Her hand still raised, she glanced at the ceiling. He'd dug a shard of the angel-blade shackles out of the sofa and thrown it into the ceiling, piercing the lines of the trap.

She lit with lethal power and he jumped up, the angel blade he'd dropped earlier leaping into his hand, which he lifted. They stood for a moment, their poses a reflection of each other. Then she grew brighter.

"Now, love. You've seen that I'm a medalist in the shard-throwing event, and that was before I had my power back. Try to destroy me, and I'll put this blade right through the heart of your grace."

She hesitated.

"Then someone else will put Heaven back in order," he said quietly. "Not you."

In unison, they lowered their hands slowly. But he kept hold of the blade, and she continued to glow.

"My offer's still good, Naomi. This little standoff notwithstanding. You've simply proven that we're equally matched. And that nothing could resist our combined power."

"Don't bother. I was inside you, Crowley. I know you'd kill any consort of yours the instant you could do without her. I can still feel your self-isolation, it's like a stone from Pluto."

He grinned and vanished.

Then he reappeared. "No, I'm not going to let you delude yourself. You think you're warm? Because you're righteous? No. You do a good job of hiding it from yourself. But that precious righteousness of yours is the aurora borealis. All flash and fire, and the coldest setting on Earth."

He actually took a step toward her. "Someday, dear – when you've slaughtered more angels than Castiel ever dreamed of, or betrayed your only ally, or killed a roomful of powerless humans just to get something you want – you may reconsider my offer. You know where I'll be."

This time he vanished for good.

After a moment, carefully, she drew the shards of her shackles out of the furniture, walls and ceiling. Suspending them in the air in front of her, she refashioned them into a short dagger. It fit up her tailored sleeve even better than a blade.

She set the room to rights with a careless wave. No one would ever know what had happened here.

Her eye was caught by the fireplace. As she moved over to it, it blazed up again. She stood before it, her arms and hands open, as though beckoning the warmth into her embrace.

"Liar," she whispered. "Liar."

.

.

THE END


End file.
